Tackling Fraud
Tackling fraud by Margaret Graham
Occasionally pensions continue to be paid to a member after their death. This is usually because their surviving spouse or relatives have not informed rpmi of the death. Once we have been notified, the necessary steps are taken to recover any money that has been overpaid. In most cases this is genuine oversight, however, on rare occasions it is because someone is trying to receive benefits that they are not entitled to. There are things a pension scheme can do to minimise the risks of this happening in the first place and your administrator rpmi is ahead of the game in this area.
One way rpmi mitigates the risk of fraud is by participating in the National Fraud Initiative (NFI). The Audit Commission checks the data that the Government holds on registered deaths against our records and sends us the results in March. We then check our own records against this data to see if there are any anomalies. In 2006-2007 this process enabled rpmi to identify 90 deaths that were not previously known about.
We take the issue of pension fraud very seriously and in addition to the NFI we have in place other measures to minimise the risk of it occurring in the Railways Pension Scheme.
Anti-fraud measures employed by rpmi within the UK:
- In addition to the NFI, rpmi recently joined the General Register Offices for England and Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland 'Disclosure of Death Registration Information' scheme, which covers registered deaths within the UK. rpmi receives weekly updates and cross-references them against our own records.
- After receiving any returned or undelivered mail addressed to anyone on our pensioner database, rpmi tries to make contact with the pensioner. If this fails, payment of pension benefits is suspended. If the pensioner subsequently contacts rpmi to request the reinstatement of their benefits, security checks are made to establish their identity before payment is reinstated.
Measures taken for pensioners living outside the UK:
- Each year all pensioners living abroad are sent a letter and form, which they are required to complete, sign and return. A witness (from a designated list of officials) also has to sign the certificate to vouch for their authenticity.
- Nigeria has been identified as a country where there is an increased risk of fraudulent benefit claims. We have a number of pensioners living in that country, so rpmi employs an agency every two years, to make direct contact with each of them to establish that they are still alive and consequently entitled to continue receiving their benefits.
We can assure you that all the policies we follow meet the requirements of data protection law and the Audit Commission processes the data for NFI purposes only, complying with all data protection principles.